TEHRAN, Aug. 12 (MNA) – After attending the fifth Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit in Kazakh city of Aktau, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani left Kazakhstan for Iran on Sunday.

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani left Kazakhstan for Iran on Sunday afternoon after attending the Fifth Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit.

President Hassan Rouhani arrived in Aktau earlier on the day and addressed Caspian Sea Littoral States Summit and signed the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea in Kazakhstan.

He also met with President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Federation, President Nursultan Nazarbayev of the Republic of Kazakhstan, and President Ilham Aliyev of the Republic of Azerbaijan, on the sidelines of the summit, and discussed bilateral, regional and international issues with them.

He also addressed a joint press conference in the afternoon and then went to the beach to set some baby fish free in the sea as a symbolic move to mark friendship between the coastal countries of the Caspian Sea.

The presidents of the five coastal states of the Caspian Sea- Iran, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Russia and Kazakhstan- met on Sunday in Kazakhstan's northwestern city of Aktau at the fifth Caspian summit to take stock of many years of negotiations on the legal status of the Caspian Sea. The heads of states signed the convention of the legal status of the Caspian Sea in the summit and 5 agreements to expand regional cooperation.

The first meeting of the Caspian states’ leaders was held in Ashgabat in 2002, and the other summits were convened in Tehran, Baku and Astrakhan.

The Caspian Sea is the largest inland body of water in the world and accounts for 40 to 44 percent of the total lacustrine waters of the world. The coastlines of the Caspian are shared by Azerbaijan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Turkmenistan.

The question of determining the legal status of the Caspian Sea have gained relevance after the collapse of the USSR, when the emergence of new subjects of international law — Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan — raised the question of the delimitation of the Caspian between the five countries. The difficulty of determining the status of the Caspian sea are related, in particular, with the recognition of its lake or sea, the delimitation of which is governed by different provisions of international law.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif, heading a politico-legal delegation, arrived in Kazakhstan’s Aktau on Saturday and took part at the Caspian littoral states’ ministerial meeting.

Kazakhstan’s Aktau, the venue for this year’s summit, is a city with a population of 180,000, whose residents greatly depend on the production and processing of Caspian resources.